ISS, a space odyssey, as computers go down

Astronauts have managed to get one of the computers on the International Space Station (ISS) up and running again after all three went down last night.

The entire system, including backup facilities, crashed shortly after the ISS crew of ten went to bed. Life support systems were not affected, however, so the crew was not in danger.

This morning the crew used laptops to send and receive data from the station's command and control computer, successfully executing commands to set up some of the on-board systems.

At the same time, contact between Earth and the ISS was maintained through the space shuttle Endeavour, which is delivering a robotic arm to the station. Had Endeavour not been in the vicinity, all communication would have been lost until the crew fixed the problem themselves.

The ground team at Nasa managed to send a power cycle to command and control computer 1, which successfully turned on and off a light on board the Destiny laboratory and helped bring one of the computers back online.

"Overnight the space station flight control team will attempt to reset the computers by commanding them from 'primary' to 'standby' mode in an effort to clear any software interaction that might be causing the problems," reads an excerpt from the ISS status log at Nasa Mission Control.

"If successful, this would allow the Expedition Crew and ground controllers to again interface with the command and control computers. The diagnostic troubleshooting will continue through the night."